Poll -- Tell Us What You Think of Voice Recognition

[Bob Russell]

We're asking for your thoughts on voice recognition software in a poll, but first a few thoughts.

November brings the release of ScanSoft's Version 8 of Dragon Naturally Speaking. eWeek writes that the program is greatly improved, especially in terms of accurracy which has improved by over 20%. One reseller of the software says "It really works; it's not an accuracy problem." (Of course, over the years I've heard that sort of comment a lot. Usually it means that a capability is almost there, but not quite yet!) But Chuck Runquist is the CEO of a software evaluation company, and he said "They did a super job in bringing it up to speed, in particular with the accuracy." So maybe there's something to it.

My own interest was due partly to the mention of support for Palm handhelds. It turns out that there is support for both Palm and Pocket PC, but the voice recognition and transcription only happens when you get back to your PC. Not quite enough processing power in your handheld for the full-blown program, but even integrated remote dictation starts to conjure up all kinds of new uses.

For example, imagine taking most of your notes verbally, and keeping them for future reference as text. Or, how about keeping your PDA in front of you during a meeting and catching all your comments for a sort of personal mini-minutes in text form. (I would say you could transcribe the meeting discussions, but I doubt the little mic on your PDA would be sufficient to catch any more than one person's words at best.)

And now things could get really exciting for tablet PCs also, where one would be able to do transcription on the fly!

Please give your opinion of voice recognition in the poll, and check out the full article at Voice software makes strides

[jkendrick]

Speech recognition has been evolving for ten years now and is extremely accurate but Dragon has been at 95%+ accuracy for years so I don't know where that 20% improvement statement comes from unless they mean in speed. The TabletPC has speech recognition built into the input utilities that is actually pretty good but not as good as Dragon's. IBM's viaVoice is pretty good too and is sold / supported by ScanSoft just as Dragon is now. There is a video "first look" at the new version of Dragon here:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/11/04.html

[Colin Dunstan]

Thanks for the link, James. I am surprised how advanced speech recognition is today. I remember when I installed Dragon Dictate V4.0 (or so) for a disabled colleague of mine; it was from perfect and only useful for those who were really patient.

[TadW]

OK, people look at weird at me today when I use my PDA to read e-books. Imagine their looks when I even start talking to it!

[cbarnett]

<image of tadw screaming "Beam me up, Scotty!" at the bus stop>.... lol

Craig.

[d2spillers]

I have used voice recognition software on my pda and cells, the only problem I have had is when I talk to it, it has to be in the same environment where it Learned the voice. It was quiet when I trained it and in the car where it was noisier, it could not find the right command, and I tried programming it while it was nosier, had the same problems. Hoping it gets better before I waste any more money on the programs.

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by d2spillers

I have used voice recognition software on my pda and cells, the only problem I have had is when I talk to it, it has to be in the same environment where it Learned the voice. It was quiet when I trained it and in the car where it was noisier, it could not find the right command, and I tried programming it while it was nosier, had the same problems. Hoping it gets better before I waste any more money on the programs.

Just so you know, you are bringing up really old threads. This one is from 2004.